DanSpec.com

Yes its been a hella long time since I posted. But… I have been busy. I just posted a new song to riffworld its a little rough around the edges but its done.

The song and the story behind it can be found on my Riffworld Page

And if you want a version of The Little Green Alien with no lyrics let me know and I can send it to you for a small fee. But all the derivatives you create will be yours – no further marketing fees will be due.

I have a couple more tunes in the works. Will post them when they are done. Oh, and check out my Youtube page, I have posted a few new videos there. Nothing to informative but cool if you know me or are related.

Rock on!

Download the Little Green Alien and the Telco Box here:

The Little Green Alien and the Telco Box..

Howdy all.. yeah its been a long time since I posted. Been busy with work and my kids.

I have been listening to some really good podcast on songwriting and have been working on some new stuff tho…

There’s Hit Songwriting Tips by Graham English this guy has good stuff to say and some of his tips are really quite insightful. Now Graham is out to make a buck so there are ebooks and programs for sell on his site, but there’s also a lot of really great freebies to be found on his site.. and I personally cant blame the guy for trying to make a buck.. Sheesh.. I need to find some way to make a buck on net! Ya, i did try to make money with ebay for awhile, but that turned into a lot of work for not so much money.. anyways I better get back to this post..

I found a few good podcast here:
Links to podcast you should be listening too

And, last but not least check out this site and their podcast:
http://www.artofthesong.org/

Been goofing around with Twitter lately, more on that in my next post…

Yep, thats right.. I released yet another song. Mustang is a collaboration I did with a great bunch of great guys at Riffworld, using Riffworks. I started this song over 20 years ago, riffcasted what I had to riffworld and invited the four musicians listed below to see what would happen.. Take a listen.. It turned out quite well if I do say so myself.

Hal, Josh, Jim and Ron helped make this song what it is, and are all excellent musicians.. Below are links to their Riffworld pages and a description of the work they did on this song.

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/Rotund
The excellent main vocals, lyric help where needed, backing guitars and some lead guitar(Co-Writer).

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/Joshua001
Bass, One of the best bass players I have ever heard..

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/pooterpatty
Intro lead guitar, and all the really hot solos, and some of the cool backing guitar fills

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/Stymie
Drummer extrodinaire.. yes those are real live drums on this song, not the electronic never ending drumloops most of my songs have. Ron has a really good ear and helped with the mixing too..

Tags: Music, New song release, riffworld

Yep, Rotund – One of the official Rifflink Junkies remixed my song Tiresmoke and Gasoline. The new version can be found on his profile here:

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/Rotund/tiresmoke-gasoline/

and for comparison you can listen to the original here:

http://www.riffworld.com/Members/DanSpec/tiresmoke-and-gasoline/

This is a song I wrote, because it really angers me how so many people who say they believe in god, can kill each other, and think they are doing the right thing… The three faiths that believe god spoke to Moses when he was given the 10 commandments – continue to kill each other, and hate and it pisses me off. Wake up and read your Torah, Koran or Bible..   God said “Thou Shall Not Kill!”

This current release is a work in progress, so please do feel free to leave comments using the comment feature below to let me know what you think is good or bad about it.

Click here to listen to the song and for all info regarding Thou Shall Not Kill click here.

I stopped by SoundClick today and after noodling around a bit I found that SoundClick has charts where the list the top played songs. My song was #52 out of 9,162 in the Classic Rock genre and #551 out of 163,605 in Rock..

Songs are rated by the first play from any unique internet address. So, if you play it 20 times, and someone else in your house plays it 10 times.. Only the first play counts.

You can see the current ratings here.

Yep, I have a couple weeks off so I am going to spend a good chunk of this time recording some of my songs. This morning I finished up Tiresmoke and Gasoling, which is a song I wrote in remembrance of a GTO I had back when I was 17.. Dang I loved that car…

Keep checking back. I started working on another song this afternoon and hope to have it posted sometime tomorrow.

You can hear my new song by clicking play on the song player to the left, or goto my soundclick profile and play it there. Heck, if you love me mucho you can even buy it there…

There were First, Second and Third place prizes offered. Third place was what they called a popularity contest, which was decided by whoever could get the most shouts from users of the site, or anyone in the world who stopped by and left a shout. I came in second, Daniel Diaz beat my entry with about 20 votes.

2nd place was decided by whoever received the most votes from users of the site, and 1st was picked from one the top 6 site user picks by a band named Rooney.  More information on who won what can be found here.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to leave a shout for my song. I didnt win, but I did come in 15th out of 66 entries.

Riffworld and Sonoma Wireworks rocks… I have used various DAW’s to record music over the years. Cubase, Protools, Audacity etc.. And I have had some level of success with all.

But! When I downloaded and installed the free T4 version of Riffworks multitrack recording software. I was able to take song ideas and within a few hours come up with complete songs.

I think one of the things that really sets Riffworks apart is the way you can chunk out the parts of song using what they call riffs. For example lets say I have a lick and I set it to be 12 bars long and name it verse 1. So I record it.. next come up with a 8 bar riff called bridge.. and then I do a 12 bar chorus.. Now I adjust the levels add lyrics and maybe play with all the cool effects Sonoma has put into Riffworks a bit.

OK, now all I have to do to come up with verse 2 – is copy verse 1, take the lyrics off and put down new lyrics and boom verse two is done.. If I need to have a section for the solo.. I can do the same thing I did for verse 2 but add a guitar solo… finally I add an intro and ending and next thing ya know I have a song.

The instant drummer and effects are really great too. I love the delay and compression, both work very well.

Now, lets say I come up with just a guitar and find an instant drummer part that fits the groove, well this is where Riffworld comes in… I can connect using what Sonoma calls a Rifflink and other musicians will join my rifflinked session and add everything from basslines, sythesisers and vocals to helping me mix a song to where it comes out being a complete kick ass tune to be proud of. Check this out for example: Get it straight

What cha waiting for.. go there and sign up! Or if you don’t play guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, flute (I could go on for ever here) or sing.. at least go check it out.

Here is a link to my page on Riffworld..

DanSpec — RiffWorld.

Tags: home recording, riffworks, riffworld

IndabaMusic is a great place to meet other musicians and collaborate online.  Indaba has an innovative flash powered mixing console, which is cool since you can download someones track, load it into your favorite Digital Audio Workstation(DAW) and cut your tracks. Then when finished upload said tracks to Indaba, load them into the flash console and mix away.

They have an active online community – and your likely to find musicians who play all kinds of different instruments and musical styles.

My IndabaMusic profile is here:

Dan Specht’s Profile – Indaba Music.

Tags: home recording, Music